To reflect the growing and diverse interest in local food production and cultivation, we have adopted a new Urban Agriculture Policy that aims to broaden the types of food-related projects considered in parks, including one-off and pilot projects.

Curtis Stone with some fresh kale at one of his Kelowna, BC urban farming operations. Stone is an expert at farming profitably on small parcels of land.

If you want to earn a good living, put ideology in your back pocket, advises Curtis Stone

By Randy Shore
Vancouver Sun
February 5, 2015

Excerpt:

“When I look around Vancouver at the yards that are being farmed there are 20 different vegetables growing at every location and that just isn’t going to work,” he said in a phone interview from a Florida beach. “You’ve got to specialize and that means if you have a thousand square feet to work with at one location, do the whole thing in carrots in straight rows, like a real farm.”

The Vancouver Park Board will be mandating that community gardens and local agriculture projects be planted in soil free of urban contaminants.
Photograph by: Jason Payne, Vancouver Sun.

Nearly 80 per cent of people who responded during a public consultation period approved of the draft revisions

By Randy Shore
Vancouver Sun
February 5, 2015

Excerpt:

VANCOUVER — New Vancouver Park Board guidelines will require that edible plants grown in community gardens and agricultural projects be planted in soil free of urban contaminants.

New soil and barriers must be used where the quality of the existing soil is not known, and the Park Board will ensure that affordable soil testing will be available to growers, according to a draft of the new Urban Agriculture Policy expected to be approved later this month.

CP Rail says it will take a couple of weeks to study the Supreme Court ruling before deciding when to restart the repair operations on the Arbutus corridor rail line, above.
Photograph by: Jeff Lee, Vancouver Sun

Vancouver City loses bid to stop CP Rail’s Arbutus corridor plan

Brent Jang And Ian Bailey
The Globe and Mail
Jan. 20 2015,

Excerpt:

Canadian Pacific Railway Ltd. was within its rights to bulldoze some sheds and smash through community gardens along its unused Arbutus corridor, a judge has ruled, and the company can forge ahead with plans to store railcars on the abandoned line.

“The City did not and cannot claim any property interest in the Arbutus corridor, nor can the City assert such rights on behalf of others in response to the proposed use of the corridor” by CP, Chief Justice Christopher Hinkson of B.C. Supreme Court wrote in his judgment released Tuesday.

Launched in January 2013, the City of Vancouver’s Food Strategy represents the culmination of over ten years of policy, planning and community organizing towards the creation of a healthy, just and sustainable food system. None of this would be possible without the creativity and dedication of countless individuals, community groups, and local businesses. This video highlights some key areas that have made a big impact in Vancouver.

Garden beds on the 4th floor deck. Building was designed by architect Sean McEwen.

Seven beds with a wonderful view west across Kitsilano

Architect Sean McEwen has built seven beds for urban agriculture into his design for the newly opened Kitsilano Neighbourhood House in Vancouver, BC. Originally opened in 1894 when it was named the Alexandra Orphanage and Non-Sectarian Home Society, it moved to its present location in 1972 where its many program “reach people and help them with their community aspirations, needs and challenges and problem.”

“The gardeners that I knew whose gardens were destroyed in the first round-up around Marine Drive lived in co-ops.”

By Katie Hyslop
Magaphone Magazine
December 2014

Excerpt:

“There really isn’t a need for a railway to go through this area that they’ve made us aware of,” Levenston says of CPR. “But there’s a huge need for green space in this city as the city grows busier and busier, as the price of houses goes up, as people lose their gardens as [they] move into high rises. This [the Arbutus Corridor] is a gem.”

Levenston adds losing the green space of the corridor would be akin to losing half of Stanley Park. Instead of selling the land back to the city, he maintains CPR should donate it back to the people of Vancouver.

16 Oaks Community Garden in Vancouver. A recent study detected metal contamination associated with high traffic ares in the soil. Photograph by: Arlen Redekop.Soil research suggests study required before growing food on land near busy transportation corridors

By Randy Shore,
Vancouver Sun
December 2, 2014

Excerpt:

An eight-month study of Vancouver garden and agricultural soils has found levels of lead and other metals above the most stringent Canadian standards for human health.

Samples taken from the 16 Oaks community garden averaged 219 parts per million of lead, which exceeds the standard of 70 to 140 ppm for agricultural, residential and park land set by the Canadian Council of Environment Ministers.

Jen Rustemeyer has. She and her life/business partner, Grant Baldwin, have spent the last few years wading through garbage – sometimes literally, but also in a broader philosophical sort of way.

In their first documentary, The Clean Bin Project, the B.C. couple committed to living as waste-free as possible for one year, to buying no more landfill-bound stuff. This idea resonated with people. Rustemeyer and Baldwin were invited to schools to complete waste audits and were blown away by how much perfectly good food was being tossed in a country where 1 in 10 people is food insecure.

Watching life on the Internet, or as local Vancouver writer William Gibson named it, ‘Cyberspace’, has been our modern habit for approximately a quarter century.

In 1994 City Farmer Society began to connect with people across the globe via the ‘World Wide Web’ to share their stories about growing food in the city.

We originally started this news service on paper in 1978 by producing an eight page tabloid. But that couldn’t compare with the ease and global reach of the wired Net. Stories sent in at 1AM were re-circulated to a global audience by 1:15AM.

Here at the Vancouver Compost Demonstration Garden we take our craft seriously. Compost is what powers us, and this year we wanted to celebrate the fruits of our labours in a ‘Home Grown Brew’ kind of way.

We acquired some locally sourced hop rhizomes and created a large container garden, which we filled with a combination of our own backyard compost, vermi-compost and municipal made compost. The beautiful lantern-like cones and the tallness of the trellised hop plants surprised visitors and they were a wonderful addition to our garden tours.

The current booming Pacific North West Craft Beer industry has made people ‘hop aware’ and excited about ‘do-it-yourself’ signature beer.

The new Southeast False Creek Temporary Community Garden is up and running with 222 community garden beds and seating for the emerging False Creek community. This space is temporarily being used as a community garden for local community members to grow food. The garden will last (likely) for 2 years and we’ll keep everyone posted about the garden timelines.

FoodGROWS offers a variety of low-tech and high-tech solutions for confined urban spaces.

Garden shop occupies a tiny niche in the urban landscape

By Randy Shore
Vancouver Sun
November 2, 2014

Excerpt:

FoodGROWS.com is designed to occupy a niche not well served by garden suppliers or serious back-to-the-land outfitters. The website even has a 10-question entry point that helps guide new customers to the products best suited to their space and temperament.

Products range from low-tech wooden planters and wall-mounted pouch planters to high-tech plastic tower gardens for balconies and rooftops and soil-free growing systems, including a tabletop aquaponic herb planter with an aquarium base (goldfish not included).

Edible City is a fun, fast-paced journey through the local Good Food Movement that’s taking root in the San Francisco Bay Area, across the nation and around the world. Introducing a diverse cast of extraordinary and eccentric characters who are challenging the paradigm of our broken food system, Edible City digs into their unique perspectives and transformative work— from edible education to grassroots activism to building local economies— finding hopeful solutions to monumental problems. Inspirational, down-to-earth and a little bit quirky, Edible City captures the spirit of a movement that’s making real change and doing something truly revolutionary: growing the model for a healthy, sustainable local food system.